title: A system to define and allocate health care resources on a territory to improve the life quality of the populations in developing countries.
abstract: In this paper the health resource allocation problem is discussed. An object-oriented system is proposed and its implemented prototype is illustrated. It consists of two parts: a Geographical Information System, which is able to acquire and store both geographical and social-epidemiological information (including the resource distribution on that territory), and a Decision Support System, able to decide, using optimization algorithms, the new resource allocation in order to obtain a quasi-optimal solution for the cost/benefit ratio minimization problem, after having fixed the goal (e.g., the decrease of the incidence of a given disease) and constraints (e.g., a fixed budget, a given set of available resources, etc.). The object-oriented database which is part of the system can simulate and store different scenarios, depending on the different goals and constraints defined in input, by means of a user friendly interface.
authors.affiliation: Istituto di Studi sulla Ricerca e Documentazione Scientifica, C.N.R., Roma, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ferri
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pourabbas
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rafanelli
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Sindoni
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D002771:Cholera / Q000453:epidemiology; D003626:Data Display; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D003663:Decision Trees; D003906:Developing Countries; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000191:economics / Q000517:prevention & control; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D017048:Health Care Costs; D015276:Health Care Rationing / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D008331:Management Information Systems; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009527:Nicaragua; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011788:Quality of Life; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted